C. Marina Marchese - The Honey Connoisseur: Selecting, Tasting, and Pairing Honey, With a Guide to More Than 30 Varietals

The

HONEY

CONNOISSEUR

Selecting, Tasting, and Pairing Honey, With a Guide to More than Varietals

C. Marina Marchese & Kim Flottum

Illustrations by Elara Tanguy

DEDICATION

FROM KIM

Marina certainly is the inspiration for this work. We have worked together on projects in the past and this was the next step for each of us. Her focus is on the magic of how and why honey comes to be. Mine shows where and when honey is born. Each of us following a passion has produced what you now read. Passions, though, are fueled by many fires. My other passion, my best friend and my greatest source of support and balance, Kathy, made this book, and everything, possible. Thanks Kath.

FROM MARINA

Without Kim, this book would not be complete.

Without Vic, there would not be time to write it.

Without Becky, no one would ever read it.

Without the bees, there would be no honey.

Without beekeepers, there would be no passion.

Without honey lovers, there would be no reason.

A heart-full of thanks to all those who came on the journey and have embraced this sweet work.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

LA DOLCE VITA

In the Valley of the Kings on the West Bank at Luxor there is a tomb named KV 62 that was cut during Egypts eighteenth dynasty. It belongs to the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen. Discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter, it is considered one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century. As was the tradition in ancient Egypt, the pharaoh was buried with a cache of artifacts, including furniture, garments, and food. Among these articles were clay vessels filled with olive oil and wine.

The vessels were inscribed with detailed notes naming the type of wine, the producer, the geographic region in which it was produced, and the date when the jar was sealed. Nearby were two more vessels described by Carter as drab pottery with double handles, bound with rush and secured with clay seals. The shoulders of these vessels carried the identification of the contents, written from right to left, in black hieratic script, depicting the word for honey bee. When the clay seals were removed, the insides of the jars revealed honey, completely preserved, still almost liquid, and retaining its original sweet aroma. These offerings of honey, olive oil, and wine were placed in King Tuts tomb alongside his body because it was believed that he would need these items in his afterlife. More than three thousand years later, the olive oil and wine had spoiled, but the honey remained intact and edible.

Bees and honey played an important part in the everyday life of the Egyptians. They were the first nomadic beekeepers, floating their hives up and down the Nile following the seasonal blooms. Their main sources for nectar were orange, clover, and cotton. Honey was removed from the hives by smoking out the bees, then crushing the comb and straining the honey into clay jars. It was used as a culinary sweetener, as well as for mead and medicine. Ancient medical texts written on papyrus describe honey as being used for ointments and touting its therapeutic effects on wounds. The walls of tombs were rich in bee imagery depicting scenes of beekeeping and honey production. Cleopatra, the last ruling pharaoh, celebrated for her beauty, was said to be indebted to honey inside and out. After her ritual of bathing in milk and honey she indulged in her favorite snack, a sweet honey nut truffle called dulcis coccora.

Honey, like wine and olive oil, was considered a luxury by the Egyptians and was stored in clay amphorae or wooden flat-bottom vessels. The chards recovered from Tutankhamens tomb revealed that each amphora was carefully labeled with information including the honeys source or provenance, the date and location of its production, and the name of the person who sealed the jar. The origin and quality of agricultural products obviously played an important role in ancient societies. The title sealer of the honey was given to those respected people who oversaw the act of sealing the honey-filled vessels, ensuring quality control. The descriptions of these practices are the earliest references to terroir and the high value placed on agricultural commodities.

The Science and Art of Making Honey

Honey is made by honey bees from the nectar of flowers. Inside every beehive is a honey-making factory buzzing with activity where natures virtuose are transforming the floral nectar into the sweetest elixir on the planet. A worker honey bee will make just teaspoon of this culinary masterpiece in her short life. Hundreds of varieties of honey are harvested here in the United States, and thousands around the world. Many are limited harvests, produced seasonally and remaining local to their region. The recipe never changes, only the flower, the nectar, the season, and the region in which its collected. Its these factors that make every jar of honey unique in color, aroma, and flavor.

Honey is exclusively the creation of the female worker honey bees, who are also responsible for almost all other hive duties, including brood rearing, collecting nectar and pollen, cleaning house, building beeswax comb, defending the hive, and attending to the queen. The queen will outlive all of her daughters and sons because of her special diet of royal jelly, but she does not directly contribute to honey production in any way. The colony is also made up of a smaller, seasonal population of male bees called drones, whose main purpose is to mate with a queen from another colony, but they also serve other purposes. When drones are present the hives population is in balance. Drones act as heat sinks aiding the colony by giving off heat from their warm bodies on cool spring and summer evenings. They also produce a series of pheromones that help motivate workers to collect both nectar and pollen.

Worker bees begin foraging for water, pollen, nectar, and propolis (a resinous material used to repair and maintain the hive) when theyre about twenty-one days old. The honey-making process begins in a sunny field of blooming flowers, where a worker bee chooses to visit the most attractive flowers with the sweetest-smelling nectar. She hovers over its petals, then gracefully lands, probing the flower to locate the nectar, and begins sipping up the nectar with her long, tube-like tongue called a proboscis. When she is satisfied, she seeks out more flowers of the same species until her nectar-carrying storage container, called a honey sac, is full. Then she carries her bounty back to her hive. A worker bees tiny body is capable of carrying more than her own weight in nectar. While the bee is on the way home, the nectar is mixed inside the honey sac with an enzyme called invertase, beginning the transformation into honey. Once back at the hive she transfers her load to her sisters to continue the honey-making process.